Sky Noise during Sunset and Night

Hi,

I realize this shot isn't a-p.net material, but just using it as an example of a problem I have.

I work a lot at night, so the majority of my shots are low light. All is fine for the most part, I get pretty creative using my suitcase as a tripod, or even just setting the camera on the ground and using my wallet to prop it up. However, if I take a wide landscape style shot, there is so much noise in the sky where the light starts to drop off.

I've tried noise removal in PS, blurring, and Nix Define on such shots, and it just creates sort of waves in the sky instead of smoothing things.

Here is an example of one shot.

Any tips for smoothing the sky?

Thanks.

Attached photos:

I'm not an expert but if your shots are in raw, the "luminance" setting in lightroom could be really useful. I use LR5 and it works for me.

What equipment are you shooting with?

This was with an old T1i. I have a 60D now, but even that shows the same issues from time to time. A Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 usually lives on my camera for random work trips.

This post has been edited by Isaac Adler on 10th November 2014 - 18:20

How about trying a multiple exposure blend? Shoot one shot properly exposed, then shoot one at -3EV and just blend the darker one over the lighter one but only the sky portion. It might help control banding.

I've had issues with this in the past as well Isaac, most notably this image

Even after a ton of attempts there is still some minor banding, but its waaay better than it used to be. I'm having trouble with a b&w image right now.

With that MD-11 I added noise in the sky (2% under the noise->add noise menu in PS), then did a Gaussian blur on it (2.0 I think), then re-did noise reduction (I use topaz) It worked well for that image, but its not working well for the one I'm working on now.